The sister of a man who froze to death after a Vancouver police officer dumped him in an alley says the RCMP told her he was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

Frances Jourdain told a public inquiry into Frank Paul's death Tuesday that a Mountie called her home in late January or early February 1999 to say her brother had died and that police could not find the driver who hit him.

"He was hit by a vehicle and they don't know who did it,'' Jourdain recalled from the phone conversation with an officer whose name and rank she didn't remember.

Jourdain said she was asked to call the coroner's office and make arrangements for her brother's body, which she had transferred to her childhood home of Elsipogtog, N.B., for a funeral.

Jourdain, who was testifying by phone from her home near Portland, Maine, said it wasn't until three years later that she learned the truth about how Paul died on Dec. 6, 1998.

She said her cousin in Elsipogtog told her Paul was found dead a few hours after he'd been in the custody of the Vancouver police department.

The cousin, Peggy Clement, has testified that a senior lawyer with the B.C. Police Complaints Commission told her about what actually happened to Paul.

Last November, Clement told the inquiry that she and several family members in Elsipogtog were shocked as they watched a video recording of a soaking-wet Paul being dragged in and out of the Vancouver drunk tank, where he'd been refused admission before he died.

The 48-year-old Mi'kmaq from New Brunswick, who was a homeless chronic alcoholic, was then left by a police officer in an alley, where he died of hypothermia.

Const. David Instant has tearfully told the inquiry that he dragged Paul back out of the drunk tank on the evening of Dec. 5, 1998 because the man was so intoxicated that he couldn't walk.

Instant said that was after the sergeant refused to let Paul stay at the facility, saying he wasn't drunk and only looked that way because of a disability.

Jourdain, who had not spoken publicly about her brother's death until Tuesday, said he was a happy man who had a talent for drawing.

"He would look after me, take care of me, even after I got married and had kids,'' she said.

"He was a good brother. I miss him.''

Jourdain, 55, said she did not know her brother as an alcoholic but that she'd been separated from her siblings when she was five and sent to live in Maine.

She said she saw Paul periodically, the last time in the late 1980s, when he came to visit her.

"I never saw him drink,'' she said.

One of the last times she heard from Paul was when he called her in 1986 and she told him their brother had died, Jourdain said.

A month later, Paul called again, only to be told Jourdain's daughter had passed away.

"He said nothing and hung up.''

The inquiry has heard that Paul was a regular at the drunk tank, where he'd been admitted 33 times between July and December 1998.

Jourdain said she did not receive any other calls from police about other information pertaining to her brother's death or whether the person responsible had been caught.

Last month, Const. Cheryl Leggett testified that she was tasked with determining if police misinformed Paul's family about what happened to him.

However, Leggett told the inquiry that while she had Jourdain's phone number, she didn't call her to ask her about what she'd been told by RCMP.

Insp. Robert Rothwell, an internal investigations officer, has testified that the Vancouver police department conducted a comprehensive probe about who was told what about Paul's death.

Rothwell said some members of Paul's family believed the RCMP had relayed certain information but it could have been someone in the band office in Elsipogtog or even the Vancouver police department.

However, Dan Jourdain, Frances Jourdain's husband, testified Tuesday that he answered the phone call from the RCMP and remembered thinking he didn't know what the letters stood for before learning from his wife that it was a police force in Canada.

Mike Tammen, a lawyer for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, has said the Vancouver police department was involved in a coverup in its handling of the case and that the internal investigation into what Paul's family had been told was hardly comprehensive.